Blue Satin
by Emoosey
Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics. [Time travel AU] [Slow-build Katara/Zuko Political Drama] [Told in 300 word snippets]
1. Lip Lock

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **LIP LOCK**

The last thing she remembered was Aang's lips pressed against hers. It was a fumbling wet kiss that conveyed more desperation than it did passion, but he was twelve, he didn't know what else to do and the world was burning around them. There was no room for surprise or discomfort. The smell of astral fire clogged the air and she tasted the tears running down her face, mingling with their messy lip lock. Her blue garbs were torn and bloodied. Aang's right shoulder looked to be melted off, the tissue beneath red-black and sizzling.

She let out a breathy sob into her friend's neck as the fresh image of an exiled prince and his sister consumed in fire took vanguard in her mind. Azula had cackled through the flames and all Katara could do was run. The death clung to her, a heavy stink of destruction, and she felt it closing in. Her chest heaved painfully and although she could barely breathe she kissed Aang again. There was no romance, no sparks, but she felt her friend closely and that was all that mattered as the Phoenix King descended upon them.

She wrapped the both of them in her favourite element, the blue satin, and waited to burn.

* * *

 _Word count: 209_

 _A/N: So the updates will be sporadic at best, the chapters will probably range from grossly short to abhorrently long and I only have a very vague outline for the plot. This is just me being a boob and having a jolly (by writing some really serious dark grim junk here - lik y would u even do dis?). Oh well, I hope you enjoy this unreliable goof-off story._

 _A/N(Edit): Forget what I just said about chapter lengths. I'm fickle and I'm sorry and please look at the next A/N for the all important deets._


	2. Black Snow

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **BLACK SNOW**

Katara awoke to the black snow. It was so haunting and so familiar that at first she had considered herself in some kind of hell, removed from one torture and placed into another. The ghost faces of her brother and father, who she had seen die in Ozai's terror, hovered by her side. They were pale and tear stricken, an expression she imagined herself to mirror.

So they were dead together. Perhaps, she thought, her family had been cursed to an afterlife of agony, doomed to relive the day her mother had been taken, because they had failed. The comet had passed and Ozai had engulfed the world as they knew it in his hot fiery maw. Some had run, but there was little to no place to go. As such, the few rebels left had met in the middle and ended their lives in harried hugs and handshakes. As was Katara and Aang, their embrace a final wave goodbye.

But the grief consumed her lavishly, for it was many long minutes – it had seemed like hours – before she stirred for her kin. It was a morbid curiosity that brought her to look at their faces, still anguished but younger than she had first accounted for. Her father's face lacked the sallow appearance and aged lines she had seen on him in most recent times. All Katara saw was the recognizable horror etched upon his brow as they sat, fallen against each other, in the cold snow. Sokka's eyes were large on his face, too dewy and delicate. His features were fresh and round and when Katara reached out to touch him, she found herself to have the hand of a small child.

* * *

 _Word count: 283_

 _A/N: You know what? YOU KNOW WHAT? Each chapter will be 300 words or less (it seems to work well enough for 'forthright'). This is a challenge to myself. I will be efficient, evocative and beautiful. Hopefully. Glad to know the first chapter was appreciated. I'm trying to go crazy on my prose skills for this story. So enjoy!_


	3. Young Die First

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **YOUNG DIE FIRST**

She gasped at the sight, in a memorable infantile voice, which brought their father back to them. He gathered up as much composure as he could, pulling Katara and Sokka closer to his chest. Standing, he removed them from the entrance of their stagnant hut and walked down the small knoll to Kanna. He passed the children to their grandmother, who watched and received with a great dourness that often comes when the young die first. Kanna sat them down with some of the other children, making a show of putting together an anorak. She threaded her bone needle with sinew, dipping it in and out of the firs until a sleeve was attached to the torso. Many of the children in their circle, with their limited understanding and small attention, became quite interested in the task, but Sokka stared down at his lap, whimpering quietly to himself, and Katara watched the goings on of the tribe in an agitated fashion.

Their father soon addressed the tribe, still with a distance to his eyes and a perfunctory motion of muscle. He did not speak for long. He could not stomach it. He left the village to their own aimless tasks, left them to everything that now seemed so inane now that they knew the fire nation could easily come and burn it all. Katara watched her father go. He left for some far-off spot behind their huts to break down; this she knew, because she had seen this before.

* * *

 _Word count: 249_

 _A/N: Gosh! Why do I enjoy writing angst so much?_


	4. She Wailed

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **SHE WAILED**

She thought her father had the right idea. When Kanna wasn't looking Katara slipped away, her brother too weepy to even bother questioning her. She skimmed the edge of the village until she could be sure she was out of sight, but she need not have worried because nobody even seemed to care.

Katara made trails through the layer of soot the fire nation had left behind, revealing underneath its usual powdery white. Her strides were smaller and clumsier than she was used to and caused a mess far greater than her older self would. When she saw this, Katara gave up all attempts at normality, resigning herself to dragging her feet instead, making the black and white mix to an inscrutable grey.

She reached a craggy ice wall that peered out over the sea. She stopped there to rest. She was finding it harder to breathe with every second that passed. Everything – everywhere – felt constricted, like her insides may collapse inwards upon themselves. "Oh spirits help me," she murmured, wretchedly, and let out an involuntary whine at the sound of her own juvenile tone.

She remembered this. She remembered this so well.

This was the day her mother had died.

 _Why_ , she thought in desperation, w _hy is this happening to me?_

They had lost the war. Everyone she loved had died. _She_ had died. But no, it could not be true. She was here. She was a child. Her mother had been freshly snatched from her grasp. It was happening again. It was worse than a nightmare. This was her reality.

With nothing else to do she crouched, her back pressed into the ice, and she wailed.

* * *

 _Word count: 279_

 _A/N: *throws a handful of glitter over new chapter*_


	5. Baby Bird

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **BABY BIRD**

For weeks Katara let life in the Southern Water Tribe pass her by. Listlessly shuffling from place to place, she listened in apathy to each elder who taught the youth of her village. Initially, after the day of black snow, they treated her carefully, as if they held the quivering heart of a baby bird in their hands that could be crushed with a single misstep. They taught slow and repeated themselves an unnecessary amount of times, no doubt to cope with the glazed look in Katara's eyes whenever they addressed her. So it was a surprise to everyone when Katara completed each task she was set with unbridled efficiency and skill (especially when they considered her continually distracted state).

Her new talent was a worry to some. At night, when she was meant to be asleep, Katara heard them. The death of her mother has spurred her, was the general consensus, but they wondered, is it healthy for these destructive emotions to be channelled into craft. One woman thought Katara would upset the spirits with her mistreatment of their ways and traditions and spread her unease throughout the village.

She passed the woman on her way to supper one evening. Katara saw her sat with a number of wives, sorting through a basket of the day's fresh catches, skimming scales from flesh, and told them, "There is no good to come from someone who only executes and does not strive for understanding. It is a bad omen. I believe the spirits do not like the injustice of Kya's death. It was not her moment to die; she was not the waterbender sort after."

Of course the woman's claims were rebutted, but Katara thought the wives hesitated a moment too long with their disapproval for it to be entirely true.

* * *

 _Word count: 300_


	6. The Butterfly that Flapped its Wings

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **THE BUTTERFLY THAT FLAPPED ITS WINGS**

Katara had changed things. Her changes were subtle, but the consequences seemed larger. It was the ripple in the pool, the chip in the castle foundation, the butterfly that flapped its wings.

Last time, the last time her mother had died, Katara had not been so affected. She had been devastated and furious, yes, but now she was devoid of anything. Katara had not been broken by her mother's death before. She had been compelled to become something greater, to not let her mother die in vain. She had been determined to become a master of water. Now she had foreknowledge; she knew how ineffectual all her resolve and toils would come to be. Everything she had strived for had devolved into a tattered dream, a charred mess of bodies and faces, death incarnate.

She had not intended to change things. She had thought it pointless. Katara had planned to embrace the hell in which she had been plunged, fully expectant to once again spiral into Ozai's fatal hunger for power. Yet her unexpected capability and defeated spirit had already altered events beyond Katara's reckoning and had her shocked at the influence of her own apathy.

This time Katara was ostracised from her village, rather than coddled.

If Katara had been in the right mind, let alone cared, perhaps she would have thought to pretend to be incompetent, like the child she was meant to be. It made sense that the village was wary of her talent. She worked like an adult or, more specifically, a teenager in an eight-year-old's body.

* * *

 _Word count: 261_


	7. Frustrations

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **FRUSTRATIONS**

Her father suggested she take up waterbending again. Katara refused. It resulted in an argument, the first emotional outburst he had seen from her since Kya's death. In some ways it made him happy to see a little bit of life to his daughter again, but an argument was still an argument and it left a bitter taste on both their tongues.

Katara stormed away from the village, content to think no one would miss the presence of a tradition-defiling spirit-angering eight-year-old, and headed towards the sea, determined to get some time alone away from all the eyes that had once been yearned for but now felt far too oppressive. She sat by the sea, at the same cliff-side where she had broken down, and stared out at the uneven waves that lapped against the ice.

Hakoda had called it a disservice against her mother not to waterbend. "The nerve of him," Katara muttered, kicking a loose piece of ice into the sea. She watched it drop into the deep blue with a dull _plop_. "Isn't he meant to be a chieftain? He should be agreeing with the rest of the tribe and casting me into the sea as a demon child sacrifice."

She sighed. Katara knew she was being dramatic. She could not help it. She was very peeved and needed some way to vent her frustrations. However, venting her frustrations would surely result in utter calamity because she was frustrated at the whole universe and that was a lot of frustration to vent. Tugging her this way and that, throwing her into danger and then hurling her straight back out of it – fate was being cruel and she hoped it knew it.

* * *

 _Word Count: 284_

 _A/N: Sorry for the lack of material. I've been prepping myself for uni life. At least I know you're enjoying it so far. And another apology for those who find it hard to stomach these kinds of stories in this kind of format. It will be slow-build plot, slow-burn romance and short burst format. But the grind is what makes it all that more rewarding, right? ;)_


	8. An Old Friend

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **AN OLD FRIEND**

Katara was not against waterbending. Of course not. Waterbending was – _had been_ – her life. It was not like she had any good reason to deny her father like she had done. She supposed she just wanted to feel in control again. She wanted some part of her life, however small that may be, to be by her choice.

This must be what it felt like to not be a waterbender, lost at sea, at the mercy of the life giving yet lethal element. She _was_ lost.

Katara huffed and pushed off the ground, brushing away powdery snow. Why was she punishing herself? Water was hers and she, in turn, had given herself to the water. No amount of time travel would change that.

With a quick flick of her wrist, she beckoned to the sea, in a dance she had become master of some time ago, in another lifetime. The water came at her like an old friend and she took it into her embrace readily. It swallowed her whole, past jaws of sweet white foam into a welcoming dark pit. She thought it funny how a small touch of water could provide so much feeling – the first assaulting touch of spray against her cheek – but once submerged there was only a numb sense of calm. Peering out at her polar home through a sheet of heaving liquid gave her a new perspective. Where there was distortion, there was clarity too. With the cool, also came the red-hot burning of her lungs. And when wetness surrounded her, she realised how dry her eyes were. _Oh, dear La_ , why couldn't she cry?

* * *

 _Word Count: 271_

 _A/N: I'm not late posting this. No, no, no. Time is merely an illusion created by we humans after all._


	9. Sea-Salt Womb

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **SEA-SALT WOMB**

Hakoda wrenched his daughter out of the water sphere. She came out spluttering and half-lucid; as she was, a little girl in blue birthed from a sea-salt womb into the tundra. Water bubbled over her lips, pumped desperately in sporadic jets from her lungs, and she stared up at the sky through smarting eyes. The world span and blurred before her, yet she thought she had never seen it more clearly. It was beautiful.

Clutching Katara close to his chest, Hakoda knew he couldn't find it within himself to be angry and, instead, tears scored his cheeks like hot welts, flowing freely as his daughter's no longer could. He pat and rubbed circles into her small back, weeping.

Sokka was some paces away, his presence quite forgotten by his father until he cried in delight, "That was amazing!". He staggered forward, reaching Katara's side to demand of her, "How'd you learn how to do that?"

"Sokka," Hakoda let out a pained admonishment, sparing a meaningful glance at his son before returning his full attention to Katara. Sokka shrunk back a little, still not wholly understanding, but having the mind to heed his father's que to quiet down. Still, he buzzed where he sat, up to his lap in snow but excited for the moment he could beseech his sister with questions.

Hakoda had come here in hopes of resolving his and Katara's earlier argument, enlisting the help of Sokka to find her nearby haunt, but all thoughts of that fled him once he saw Katara writhing in a death-trap of her own creation. He could not believe he had almost lost more family. On the back of losing Kya, Katara's death would have ruined him. If he had only been a few moments later… He could not bear the thought.

* * *

 _Word Count: 300_


	10. Dear La

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **DEAR LA**

It had been otherworldly. A deific experience of extreme proportions.

When the water had washed over her, in all its fluid and unpredictable glory, she had been met with an epiphany. _Oh dear La_ – she had fumbled at nothing, everything, palms paddling madly through satin – _dear La indeed_. The flick of a fin, the curl of a tail, two eyes, as steady black voids holding the promise of all the answers she may ever seek, swirling and circling, round and round, through her small water world.

She knew then. She at least knew _why_.

But then, she was dragged away, away from La, away from the border of the spirit world, into the arms of Hakoda and, quite ruefully, Katara thinks she would have rather seen her father angry than this. This shaking, damp-cheeked, mess in the shape of a man. She had never, ever, in any timeline, seen him like this. Not even for her mother. Katara could have bared anger, something quick and hot, like desert sand, something she could cast away to the wind. This was heavy. This was liquid. He trembled and sloshed around in anguish. His icy wraith-like water, spilling out the bowl onto her skin.

She wished her father would stop holding her. She could feel his tears falling against her skin like the point of a knife. Every press. Every quiver. His pain ran through her like her own.

* * *

 _Word Count: 236_


	11. If Spirits Were to Be Believed

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **IF SPIRITS WERE TO BE BELIEVED**

She was almost glad to feel little hands scrabbling at her side. Sokka tugged with such enthusiasm that he broke his father's grip. Katara fell back against Sokka, both of them tumbling into the snow, Sokka unable to restrain a grin, Katara numb.

"How'd you do it, Katara? How?"

"It was just waterbending," Katara muttered, rather absently.

"But I've never seen you waterbend like that before!"

Katara stared, dour, grim – eyes that refused to meet the ignorant youth of her brother's – at the ground. He had seen it, well, something like it. But that was in another time, perhaps another universe, if spirits were to be believed.

"Why?" When her father spoke his voice was hoarse, ripped apart by a deep grief. "Why would you try to drown yourself?"

She turned her eyes on her father, trying not to cringe at his pain. Nervously, she wet her chapped lips, "I— I didn't."

Suddenly, Hakoda was standing, looming. "How could you?" He spat out the words like hot dirt on his tongue.

She gazed up at him, face open and trembling before his devastation. To her side, she could hear Sokka suck in a breath.

"I wouldn't—" Was she so sure? "I wouldn't ever—"

Really, positively, sure?

Through her stuttering she manged to spit out a justification, for both her father and herself, "La came to me."

"What?" her father nearly sobbed – in his disbelief, rage, and sorrow – and it hurt to hear.

"La," she repeated, "the ocean spirit."

"I know who La is!" He knelt to her height and looked her dead-on. "Are you really trying to tell me the ocean spirit made you try to drown yourself?"

"No!" she cried, shrill and frustrated.

"Then what?" he cried back, emotions in equal measure to her own. "What, Katara?"

* * *

 _Word Count: 300_


	12. This Game of Time and Satin

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **THIS GAME OF TIME AND SATIN**

What? She wasn't sure _what_.

She could list the things she was sure of. Easy. La had come to her. La had exposed a plot, a plot larger than the spirit itself, but its part in this plot was clear. La revealed its hand in this game of time and satin, how Katara's final moment in the water sphere before Ozai tore her and Aang asunder had been just the catalyst needed for La to rip apart the spirit world, to splinter existence itself, and pull her soul away from her flesh before it could become mangled and charred. The soul of this universe's Katara was gone or, at the very least, buried so deep it may never resurface. The boy who was curled bedside her wasn't her brother. The man who stood ridged above her wasn't her father. Not really. Not in the way they wanted a sister, a daughter.

La hadn't brought her here for familial love. Katara had been given a redo. The whole world had been given a redo. Perhaps an infinite number of universes had been given a redo. She would start over, try a different route, scramble for victory, no, for survival, in any way she could. A new way. Not the way she had before. That way had got them killed.

However, in this moment, Hakoda was aching and he wanted to know _what_. But what? The exact _what_ that her father wanted, she could not be sure.

Katara's lashes dipped low against her cheek. "I don't know…"

Her father gave her one last pained look, before drawing his lips into a taught unreadable line. "We are going home. Now."

There was no room for argument. Not yet.

* * *

 _Word Count: 285_


	13. Bitter Little Spirit

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **BITTER LITTLE SPIRIT**

Over the next week Katara wondered if she truly had intended to kill herself that day. Yet the more time that passed, the more blurred events became and her uncertainty became more sever. She had felt a pull to the sea and in the immediate aftermath of the experience she placed the responsibility on La. La must have drawn her to the shoreline. La must have put the thought in her head. La made her swallow water like air. The argument sounded more foolish every time she reviewed it.

What if Katara had wanted to go to the shore line? Katara was the one who wanted to waterbend. Katara wanted to drown. This alternative made her want to be sick, so she pushed it to the back of her mind.

She chose to focus on other things, like sneaking out of the village (since her father had effectively grounded her from leaving their home since the incident). Most days she was caught and once she was caught she was forced to remain grouped up with the other children, under the watchful eyes of either Kanna or Hakoda. She was forbidden from exploring, she was forbidden from chores, and she was unequivocally forbidden to waterbend. But Sokka had begun boasting about his sister's newfound mastery of the art and soon every child in the village had their eyes trained on her. They scurried about, whispering, giggling, gasping, all at Katara's expense. They never approached.

Katara grew from child to spirit and what a bitter little spirit she was. A bitter little girl, controlled by a bitter little spirit, here to bring bitter little mischiefs upon their village.

And if there was no way of changing that opinion, Katara thought she might as well put on a show.

* * *

 _Word Count: 296_

 _N/A: Maaaaannn, this is dark :z Any criticism for this bleak piece of work is welcome :3_


	14. Splinters

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **SPLINTERS**

From the snow she drew water, from the water she gained power, and with that power she made ice. Quick, spindly things – like her – ice splinters that circled her form and became lethal in their impetus. The children that had surrounded her shrieked, some in delight, most in alarm. Their circle broke apart as her ice flew, the young crowd scattering behind tents, heads peaking from cover, unable to resist the curiosity.

Katara couldn't help it. She _was_ bitter. And she showed it with her bitter little grin, as she pushed her ice further. The cold ring expanded. Whatever children didn't cry out in fear before were screaming now. Her splinters whipped past podgy cheeks and ripped at tent flaps. But before it could cut at soft Water Tribe flesh, Katara brought them inwards, aimed directly for herself. Lightning quick, a water tendril came from the ground and took the form of a frozen blade. She swept, in an arc, and took her brand to the needles of ice and shattered them into smithereens.

When the frost settled, the vicinity was empty, bar one. There stood Kanna, lined face fraught with dismay and with an open gash on her forehead, where blood dribbled down her brow.

* * *

 _Word Count: 206_


	15. Eyes on Her

_Summary: She unfurls herself, like a bobbin, into their tapestry of politics._

 _Genre: Political/Drama_

 _Pairing: Katara/Zuko_

* * *

 **EYES ON HER**

"I'm sorry Gran Gran…"

Katara sat in her grandmother's tent, cross-legged with shoulders curling into her torso, facing the old woman whose face she cut. A young wife tended to Kanna's wound, eyes darting nervously back and forth between the two generations of water tribe.

For a while, the only sound in the tent was that of the grinding of pumice on stone, the wife acting as healer grinding medicinal materials for a poultice. When she began to apply the paste, Kanna spoke, "That was some sharp ice, child. Tell me, why would someone so soft, consider making something so sharp?"

Katara really wasn't sure what to say. "It's what the other kids wanted," she settled with, shamefaced.

"You mean the other children wanted the very chi scared out of their bodies?" Her words were droll but her face was rigid with disapproval. Katara had always found it somewhat hard to read her grandmother and that did not change here, even after being dragged through time and space itself.

Katara shifted her gaze away, "No…"

There was little more to their conversation than that. One more unimpressed look and Katara was sent on her way. Kanna didn't need many words to make you feel small.

When Katara left the tent, she felt for the first time she was truly in another universe. She walked through a village of onlookers. Eyes on her, judging eyes, and she could not shake them. Where she went whispers grew. Movement stopped. Heads Turned.

She now knew what it took to feel like a foreigner in your own home. She may share their skin and hair and eyes, but her experiences made her different and her hidden sufferings made her unwanted. She was entirely alien.

* * *

 _Word Count: 290_


End file.
